The two lines of verse 9 are parallel and stress the need to make use of the experience of the past because of the limited knowledge and life of the living generation. For we are but of yesterday: in 14.1-2 Job observes that a person’s life “is of few days,” which he compares to a flower that blooms and withers. By contrast the fathers, men like Enoch and Noah, lived long lives and gained vast experience. The sense of this expression is as in Good News Translation, “Life is short.” Translators should seek to use equivalent sayings that express the shortness of life. In some languages it is necessary to express life as a verb; for example, “We live only a short while,” “We do not live long,” or “We live very few years and then die.” And know nothing is understood to be in contrast with the great knowledge accumulated in past ages. Our days on earth are a shadow: shadow is used in Old Testament poetry as a symbol of the briefness of life; for example, Psalm 144.4, “Man is like a breath, his days are like a passing shadow.” The same thought is expressed in 1 Chronicles 29.15. In translation it may be necessary to shift to a simile and to complete the comparison; for example, “The time we live on earth passes the way a shadow passes” or “… goes away as a shadow disappears.”

Quoted with permission from Reyburn, Wiliam. A Handbook on Job. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1992. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .